Patent GB-1157033-A (GB)
Title: Computing Units
IPC: G06F11/10
Filed: 1967-08-09
Abstract: 1,157,033. Arithmetic circuits. INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. 9 Aug., 1967 [13 Sept., 1966], No. 36551/67. Heading G4A. In a computing unit, a pair of operands are logically combined in a plurality of logic sections connected in series and each terminated by a strobed buffer. A floating-point adder-subtractor has an input section A capable of registering three pairs of operands supplied from a plurality of memory units operable concurrently. A pair of operands is gated at time to to a section B the results from which are buffered at C in latches which are strobed at time t 1  to feed a section D the results from the latter being buffered at E in latches and strobed at time t 2  to feed an output bus 197. This allows more than one pair of operands (or results therefrom) to be progressing through the system at a time. An exponent subtractor 582 (complemented addition) controls assign gates 586 to pass the fraction of the number with the larger exponent through a true/complement unit 591 to a fraction adder 597 (carry propagate type) and pass the other fraction through a shifter 592 to the other input of the fraction adder 597. The adder 597 output is passed via a true/complement unit 598 to latches 599. Both true/complement units 591, 598 are controlled by an effective sign signal (determined by the operand signs and whether addition or subtraction is required). The shifter 592 is controlled via a decoder 595 from the exponent subtractor 582 to align the operand fractional points (by shifting by an integral number of 4-bit hexadecimal digit positions, this being done in two levels of gating, one of which can shift by 0, 1, 2 or 3 digits to the right and the other of which can shift by 0, 4, 8 or 12 digits to the right). The shifter 592 also receives a signal indicating whether the fraction has 6 or 14 hexadecimal digits (short or long precision): in the former case 7 digit positions will be gated from the shift unit though only 6 will appear in the final result from adder 597. Leading zeroes in the fraction result are detected at 602 to control a shifter 603 (similar to shifter 592) via a decoder 606 for normalization of the fraction result. The larger exponent from input section A is updated at 609 to give the exponent result. Checking.-Carries from the fraction adder 597 and the exponent subtracter 582 are predicted from their inputs, latched and compared with the actual carries as a check. Byte parity checks are performed on the input exponents and fractions. Parity bits are generated for the input fractions, routed by assign gates through and past a shifter to combining circuits to produce a single bit which is latched and then combined with the predicted carries for the fraction adder, the resulting parity bit being checked against a parity bit generated from the fraction adder output latches 599. The assign gates and shifter correspond to assign gates 586 and shifter 592 and are similarly controlled. Parity bits generated from the contents of the latches 599 are shifted in correspondence to the result shifting at 603 and then combined to yield byte parity bits for the fraction result. These bits are applied to bus 197 and also checked against parity bits generated from the fraction result. Parity bits generated from the exponent inputs are combined with the predicted carries for the exponent subtractor 582 to provide a parity bit which is checked against a parity bit generated from the exponent subtractor output. The parity of the exponent result (from unit 609) is predicted from the inputs to the unit 609, latched, applied to bus 197 and checked against a parity bit generated from the contents of the output latches 189 of the unit 609.